US Tech Salaries Climb, India Cautious

By siliconindia   |   Tuesday, 24 January 2012, 22:35 IST   |    1 Comments
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Bangalore: If you were an average techie working with internet technology companies, your average annual salary would now be $100,000; if you were in Silicon Valley, that is.

A new study released by Dice holdings, a leading career site for technology and engineering professionals, revealed that Silicon Valley saw a boost of about 5.2 percent in the salaries of software and other engineering professionals last year alone. This means techies in the Californian Silicon Valley are now earning about $104,195 annually instead of the average $81,327.

The increase in pay can be attributed to the internet boom that several companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Zynga, and LinkedIn experienced last year. LinkedIn and Zynga even went public last year, and Facebook is poised to make the switch this year. According to the Wall Street Journal, a number of startups were sparked into creation by the giants’ achievement.

The startups, which are on a hiring spree for software and engineers of sorts, have created a tussle for talent, and as a result of the competition, employers have to pay up, said Tom Silver, a senior vice president at Dice. On the whole, he said tech-job postings on Dice related to the Silicon Valley on Dice grew to 5,026 earlier this month, which is a 26 percent increase from the 3,974 jobs a year ago. Postings for tech-jobs across the nation rose by a meager 11 percent during the same period.

The unemployment rate in the US last year was at 8.5 percent-- an all-time low since 2009, and job growth has been sluggish, with employers adding only 200,000 jobs in December, which could be attributed to the slow economic growth worldwide.

In the Indian scenario, hiring plans of firms that have counterparts abroad as well would heavily depend on their performance in India in 2012, said Kamal Karanth, managing director, Kelly Services India. Experts further believe Indian firms have learned well from the economic crisis of 2008 and are prepared for this year, said a report from the Economic Times.

While hikes in salary could be back to old trends, they don’t expect hiring to be affected. Since companies must be attractive in terms of pay, Salaries of are not expected to come down according to a recent study Jeffries the global investment banking group, conducted on the Indian IT sector’s hiring and payment trends. Talented professionals, according to Shine.com (a branch of HT media) will still be wanted, especially at companies’ top rung.